Marco Prado, PhD, is one of five recipients of the Weston Foundation’s 2024 Rapid Response grants for his work developing safer treatments for Alzheimer’s disease.

Along with his collaborators, Prado—the Canada Research Chair in Neurochemistry of Dementia—was awarded just over $299K.

“We aim to identify safer and more effective strategies for preventing Alzheimer’s disease to ultimately improve the quality of life for millions of Canadian patients and their families,” said Prado, who is also a professor at Western University’s Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry.

This project will investigate whether a vaccine against toxic amyloid proteins, developed by Canadian biotech firm ProMIS Neurosciences, can prevent cognitive decline in mice without affecting blood vessels in the brain.

Mice are the subjects of choice when scientists need to understand whether treatments can improve disease symptoms or cause harmful effects before being studied in humans. This research will use new mouse models that have human genes linked to Alzheimer’s, including the risk gene ApoE4.

In Alzheimer’s disease, amyloid proteins accumulate abnormally in the brain. However, current treatments don’t differentiate between the mobile, soluble and more neurotoxic form of the protein called oligomers, and sticky clumps known as plaques.

Existing treatments for Alzheimer’s, like lecanemab, can help the body’s immune system clear amyloid from the brain, but it can also cause such side effects as brain swelling and bleeding, especially in patients with the ApoE4 risk gene for Alzheimer’s.

The goal of Prado’s study, being carried out in collaboration with scientists at ProMIS, is to compare the new selective vaccine with a mouse version of lecanemab.

Researchers will use cutting-edge MRI and microscopy technology to study any differences in the brain, and sophisticated analysis that takes advantage of touchscreen technology to assess behaviour changes in these special mice.

Prado says this funding, “allows us to combine better models of disease and very sophisticated imaging with behavioural assessment to fully translate our findings for the benefit of humans.”

Western is ideally positioned to manage these types of studies thanks to investments from BrainsCAN, the Canadian Foundation of Innovation and Brain Canada, which support facilities such as the Mouse Translational Research Accelerator Platform (MouseTRAP) as well as the Centre of Functional and Metabolic Mapping (CFFM).

These facilities have the latest equipment and employ career scientists who develop the technological advances used to study animal models of disease the same way humans are studied during clinical trials.

The team involved in this work was also able to leverage recent federal support from the New Frontiers Research Fund.

Prado hopes that a positive result could mean a future therapy for Alzheimer’s which is safer and more effective, avoiding some of the undesired effects of existing treatments.

The Weston Family Foundation’s Rapid Response program is designed to provide early-stage funding for “novel, high-risk, high-reward translational research” into neurodegenerative diseases of aging.